WHAT WOULD IT TAKE FOR A BIG UTILITY TO LOSE ITS MONOPOLY?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

 

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“WHAT WOULD IT TAKE FOR A BIG UTILITY TO LOSE ITS MONOPOLY?”

 

The latest response of California’s top regulatory commission to a disaster caused by an electric company can lead to only one logical question: How badly must the state’s regional monopoly investor-owned utilities behave before they’re broken up or lose their take-us-or-go-off-the-grid status?

 

Make no mistake, these companies have behaved badly for many years, but only recently paid any price at all. So far, what they’ve been dunned is a pittance compared to the damage they periodically cause. The most recent examples of possible utility malfeasance were January’s Eaton fire, which decimated much of Altadena in eastern Los Angeles County, and the less damaging Hurst fire near the Sylmar district of Los Angeles.

 

So far, official blame has not yet been cast upon Southern California Edison Co. for either blaze, with events of Jan. 7 still under concentrated investigation. The fire that made ashes of Altadena appears to have begun under an Edison transmission tower in Eaton Canyon, which stretches into the San Gabriel Mountains north of town.

 

Edison may not have shut off power in the area even as ultra-dry Santa Ana winds in the browned and brushy terrain far exceeded hurricane force.

 

If Edison is found at fault, as it was for the 2017 Thomas fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, which also caused massively damaging subsequent mudslides in Montecito, and the even larger 2018 Woolsey fire in Malibu and Simi Valley, this will be its third recent offense. What happened to three-strikes-and-you’re-out?

 

But Edison is not out, and won’t be, if only because the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) won't have that.

 

If the Thomas and Woolsey fires had taken place after 2019 and the creation of the California Wildfire Fund – mostly funded by electric customers of the monopoly companies – Edison would have been off the hook for damages caused by its equipment. But those fires were earlier, even though their final reckonings are coming only now.

 

Guess who’s supposed to pay for Edison’s failures? Not Edison, at least not much. Total damage from the Thomas fire came to about $2 billion. Under a late January PUC ruling, Edison will pay about $50 million. But its customers will be dunned almost $1.5 billion. That will cost them more than $1 per month per customer for at least 10 years, with the Woolsey fire’s reckoning not yet in. Overall, customers will likely be dunned an average of more than $3 per month for many years. All for fires they did not cause.

 

There’s a clear similarity here to the PUC’s original decision after a 2012 Edison blunder destroyed the San Onofre Nuclear Power Station. The PUC in 2014 decided customers would pay almost the full cost of Edison’s $3.3 billion error, which led to years of expensive decommissioning.

 

After consumer groups protested loudly and after exposure of the PUC president’s secret dealings with Edison executives, commissioners changed their ruling in 2018, forcing Edison to cover most costs of its error. Still, consumers are paying more than $1 billion for Edison’s mistake.

 

The new PUC action on the Thomas fire shows nothing has changed in the decade since that scandal. Not only will utility executives suffer no penalties, but Edison retains its monopoly, deserved or not.

 

It’s been much the same with California’s other two big privately-owned utilities, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric. Neither multiple manslaughter convictions nor several findings of steady negligence have dented PG&E’s monopoly. Nor have at-fault fire rulings hurt SDG&E.

 

The bottom line here is that today’s PUC members – all appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom – exercise as much favoritism toward these companies as previous commissioners named by ex-Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, who also let the companies off the hook for causing deadly fires.

 

If anyone wonders what it might take to alter or end the monopolies of these big utilities, the answer may be that it will never happen unless and until those companies can no longer make political donations.

 

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net